How To Make Money From Photography Online?

If you’re a professional photographer or ambitious amateur in photography or a person with creative eye & visual imagination, then you could make money from photography online. There are different ways to earn income with photographs and thus your picture could be thousand dollar worth.

Photography is a high-end lucrative profession, and many people are finding out the genuine online opportunities to progress their skills and to get money with their photographs.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” it is true!!!

All of us would like to take snaps with the camera. Even though we are not good in photography, we used to shoot unforgettable moments with our camera and smartphone. Whatever be the skill level, you could make use of your photography hobby to earn from photography by launching it as a profitable side business.

Let me tell you some significant details related to this matter which might help you to make money from photography online.

6 Ways To Make Money From Photography

There is a common question among the looming photographers “how can I make money online from my photographs”. Likewise, I am receiving emails from visitors to provide materials on online money making ways of photography. So, I took a chance to reveal some genuine online methods to earn as a photographer.

Check out the 6 different ways of making money from photography.

Image Credit: Freedigitalphotos.net

1. Create a website/blog and monetize it

To get prospective clients to hire you and attract buyers to purchase your prints, create a website for photography by displaying your best work and favorite images with the world. If you have no technical knowledge and frustrating to build a website for photography, you may make use the website builder that have an user-friendly interface and easy customizable without coding skill.

You may also get a word press domain with reliable hosting, fancy name & premium photography templates to set up a clean portfolio website. Adding pages for price, contact details, testimonials and about you on the created website/blog would help you to move clients from consideration to purchase in making money with photography. Once you’ve constructed a good photography website, you can monetize it through various ways to get money regularly.

2. Sell your pictures online

You can sell your photos online through the printing websites, but it would be quite hard to get the people to purchase them. Having your own website to sell your snaps and services can be a good source of online income. Some companies are helping photographers to sell their prints through an easy way by taking care of transactions and order fulfillment.

You have to set-up a shop with them to upload your high-quality pictures, and you would make money by getting a commission on every sale. So you may create your customized photography site for your clients with the help of the following photography websites.

3. Work as a freelance photographer

If you love photography so much, you may work as a freelancer in this field, and you will make a good income with it. Build an online photography portfolio by showing your best work to start getting jobs as a freelance photographer. Be selective on what photos to display and allow a professional photographer to have a look at your portfolio to improve it.

If you spend quality time to construct a stunning online portfolio, prospective clients would easily find you by checking out your work. Try to offer some free images to your clients in the initial period and once you become a popular freelance photographer, you may charge high for your incredible pictures. To get freelance photography jobs, you may visit the famous freelancing websites like Freelance.in, Elance or Odesk

4. Share your knowledge

To earn money by photography, you may share your knowledge in the form of eBooks or create video lectures for the amateur photographers. Do share your experiences and include simple and executable photography tips in digital books/series of videos. To make money, you could sell your eBooks and use a video tutorial website like Lynda.com to upload your video classes.

Moreover, if you get some people who are interested in learning photographic techniques, you can take online classes through Skype or organize a webinar for them. For this, you may utilize Fiverr to promote your photographic skill as a gig to get customers to sell your striking photos and as well to catch the attentive persons to teach photography lessons.

5. Participate in photography contests

There are many free photography contests running on the web where you can win cash prizes. If you’re a growing photographer, you might be struggling to make money off your work. In such cases, you may take part in photography contests to hone your photographic skill and display your work in front of people to gain exposure. I listed some websites where you can find the photo competitions to enter.

Promote your photography contest details on social networking sites to get more votes and a great chance of winning.

6. Make money with stock photography

With a large collection of licensed photos, you can make a great passive income with stock photography. Many advertisers, webmasters, newspaper/magazine publishers often use stock photographs rather than hiring a professional photographer.

Agencies act as an intermediate between the client & the photographer and collecting images in a library that can be searched on keywords. They are called microstock agencies and hence you may use their microstock websites to earn money with your photographs.

After you’ve signed up on a stock photography website, upload your pictures to get approval. If some of your photos get permitted, you will make money if someone wants to buy or get a license to use them. Here are some tips to take stock photos and websites to make money from photography.

Get Started With Microstock Photography

Selling stock photos to anyone who needs is the great way to make money from photography, but it is somewhat tough to get your profile and pictures accepted on the stock photography websites. Here are some simple tips to shoot the successful images to make money with stock photography.

Popular Stock Photography Websites To Sell Your Photos

Types of Photographs That Sell Well

Every budding photographer envisions the types of pictures to be taken to generate more sales. Do you think about the same? If so, check the following types of photographs that would produce more income for you.

1. Advertisers/webmasters usually look for the pictures related to electronics, technology, businesspeople in office environments and real-estate to promote their service/product.

2. Emotional pictures like happy, fear and frustration.

3. Images related to travel and food.

4. Interesting portraits linked with festivals, lifestyle and different cultures.

5. Landscape images and illustrations.

To earn by photography, it would be good to avoid uploading the pictures like people sitting idle, photo shopped backgrounds, blurred & dull light photos.

Conclusion

The explosive growth of the internet has opened numerous ways to earn money online. People do have specific skills and searching for the ways to sharpen them and make income on the web at their spare time.

If you’re a professional photographer or interested in photography, you could make a steady income with your photographic skill since the demand for images has created an incredible opportunity for you to earn with your skill through the ways mentioned above.

If you ask “how much money can I earn online with photography,” then I would say that it depends on your talent and websites where you’re uploading your pictures or popularity of your photography website.

But I assured that it would be good to make money doing something you love. Be regular to some photography based blogs and related forums to learn continuously and to keep yourself updated with latest photographic techniques.

Are you making money from photography? Do you find this post useful to present your photographic skills and sell your pictures online? Discuss with me through comments.

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About The Author

Nirmala is a devoted blogger who likes to write about technology, social media and blogging. She leads a simple life and would like to help people through her writing skills. You may connect with her on Google Plus

31 Comments

Rahul Suresh

I have got many friends who interested in Photography as the Era of SLR and DSLR camera’s sparks the photographers mind. Like u said in #2 sell picture online.. Can i know,how the visitors track easily our photography there in listed sites.. ???

Am not a photographer, but the information given here is very interesting. This might be surely useful for photographers, by reading this they can also some sort of money from online. Useful guide for photographers. Thanks for sharing this. Have a nice day.

Glad you liked this photography post. I’ve listed the tips that I know, but there are are so many information needed for the photographers to make money online. I’ll try to display such things in my future posts.

Hi Nirmala, Here you again came up with an awesome article!!! i am not a photographer but i am lit bit fond of photography. I think besides photographer other peoples can also make money by online. All the Six way of earn money from photography that you have mentioned above are really very helpful and useful for photographers and other peoples. Thanks for sharingh. Keep posting.Furniture Sydney Australia

Photography always sparks me when i focus as we as gets focused.. when the first time i bought n SLR. In fact,i was unaware about this money making via photography.. anyway thanks for the article nirmala mam..

Loved the post. I like doing photography usually I do on the pesonal level. But as a career photography can be very useful profession. Road to the any city of any career it requries burning desire and act upon that desire is vital stuff that keep us going.

Career in Photography is challenging but spectacular at the same breath.

Excellent post. Well, you have provided long list of sites to sell stock photos, this will be of great use for photographers. istockphoto, shutterstock and fotolia are the major ones. Thanks for sharing 🙂

Nirmala this post made me remind of a friend who used to make use of stock photography sites for earning money…This post will be helpful for all the people who want to make money from photography……I find many bloggers trying out their hand at photography. Photography is an interesting hobby and one can also make good amount following this hobby…

Hello Nirmala – Thanks for this detailed post. I have made some money through Getty images. Normally I upload my pictures to flickr and Getty scans Flickr and invites the accounts which has good photographs and showcases them to sellers and when their clients buy our pictures we get paid.

Hello mam, Nice idea and really helpful how to start up our own photography business. This could be a great chance for who fairly confident with his/her camera. And these are the organisation which helps to make money through photography-Fotolia, Shutterstock, Dreamstime.

Though I’m not a professional photographer my self, there’s a lot of buddies of mine with photography as their main hobby. Though their only hobby is taking snaps (awesome ones); they might not have even thought of making out of it!

Hi Nirmala Mam, You always write something special and useful so today I learnt this topic in detail. this is best way to earn online by hobbies photography is hobby of many boys and girls so, going to suggest this article for them.

yeah , it sounds good in theory but if your not a pro you may not be able to hang with the big guys, who have the goodies, light serious camera, lights, editing and all. Too saturated filed i believe thanks for the share Akos